State Dept. ignored warnings of Iranian efforts to destabilize Iraq

The Iranians aided Shi’ite militants and Sunni al-Qaeda forces against coalition forces in Iraq. And now the Obama Administration is seriously considering aiding the Iranians against Sunni jihadists. The incoherence of Obama foreign policy is staggering.

State Department counterterrorism officials warned in late April that Iran had “trained, funded, and provided guidance” to ethnic Iraqi terror groups bent on destabilizing the country.

The April warning appears to directly contradict and undermine comments last week by a State Department spokeswoman claiming that the United States and Iran have a “shared interest.”

As Iraqi militants continue to wage attacks and seize territory, the State Department has signaled that it is willing to work with neighboring Iran to stabilize the country. They have even raised the idea of discussing Iraq on the sidelines of the ongoing nuclear discussions taking place in Vienna.

That report warned that Iran is building a terror network across the globe and that it was specifically seeking to undermine U.S. goals in Iraq by fostering terror groups on both sides of the ethnic Arab divide in Iraq.

Iran also has sought to protect and bolster al Qaeda, a Sunni Muslim group that has ties to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (also known as ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham), the extremist terror group that is currently seeking to violently depose the Iraqi government.

“Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al Qaeda (AQ) members it continued to detain, and refused to publicly identify those senior members in its custody,” the State Department determined in its April report.

“Iran allowed AQ facilitators Muhsin al-Fadhli and Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and also to Syria,” according to the report.

Iran’s efforts to inflame ethnic tensions in Iraq and elsewhere appear to run counter to the State Department’s more recent claims that the United States and Iran have a “shared interest” in Iraq.

The United States and Iran “certainly have a shared interest” in combating ISIL, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters on Friday.

Secretary of State John Kerry also has signaled a willingness to talk with Iran about Iraq. State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said Monday that U.S. officials are open to a “political conversation” with Tehran.

Iran has a long and well-documented history of stoking ethnic tensions in Iraq.

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has worked with the terror group Hezbollah and “provided training outside of Iraq as well as advisers inside Iraq for Shia militants in the construction and use of sophisticated improvised explosive device technology and other advanced weaponry,” according to the April counterterrorism report.

“Similar to Hezbollah fighters, many of these trained Shia militants then use these skills to fight for [embattled President Bashar al-Assad] in Syria, often at the behest of Iran,” the report continued.

On the other side of the coin, Iran has worked with senior al Qaeda officials, permitting them to move freely around the region.

Al Qaeda facilitator Al-Fadhli “began working with the Iran-based AQ facilitation network in 2009 and was later arrested by Iranian authorities,” according to the counterterrorism report. “He was released in 2011 and assumed leadership of the Iran-based AQ facilitation network.”

Iran also has sent military advisers and assets to Iraq in recent days to help prevent ISIL from overtaking Baghdad, according to multiple reports. Up to 2,000 Iranian troops have already been sent by Iran, according to the Guardian.

As far back as 2007, Iran was accused by U.S. military officials of “training Iraqi insurgents to attack coalition forces in Iraq,” according to reports at the time.

This led former President George W. Bush to single out Iran as a “destabilizing force” vis-a-vis Iraq and a “very troubling nation,” Reuters reported.

Iran was then caught in June 2008 facilitating the passage of grenade launchers and bomb-making material to Iraqi insurgents.

That same year the Justice Department indicted a cohort of foreign nationals for funneling weapons to Iran. These arms were traced to deadly attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.

In May 2009, a large weapons stockpile was discovered along the Iran-Iraq border. The weapons cache, which included explosives and rocket launchers, was tied a Shiite militia purportedly trained and armed by Iran….

Made all the more staggering because having a coherent success strategy is not possible starting from the Unicorn school of national husbandry. Yeah, the Prez and his people are incompetent, of course they, the white building’s crawling with Ivy League Morons including a number of professors, including you-know-who.

RINOs like O’Reilly and Hannity are seizing on the incompetence theory, but failing to ask what anybody could do better based on the assumption underlying our foreign policy: that Moslems are servicable and a decent country can come out ok in dealing with them, helping them.

Typical and so predictable Obama and State Department incompetence aside, what is truly staggering is that America’s and all the West’s elites—in politics, academia and the media—continue to refuse to see how destructive Islamic religious doctrine, like death for apostasy, death for adultresses, and death for anyone who criticizes or mocks Islam, the Koran or Mohammed, is a dagger pointed right at the heart of Western Civilization, which, not surprisingly, modern front groups for Mo’s deluded and destructive creed (such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its spin-offs like CAIR) so much desire to “destroy from within.” If these are not absurd times for the West, what time ever was?

The left are actually calling for Britain to go back into Iraq and fight ISIS. This is the same left, the same people who screwed the British soldiers to the wall when they were sent in underfunded and hamstrung by their bullshit last time round. This is the same left that made international news of pictures showing British soldiers torturing Iraqis, when those pictures were taken at a TA Barracks not 500 yards from where I am sat right now… In England. They can go and die in a fire as far as I am concerned.

If we go back in there now and try to sort this problem out, where will it end? How long will we spend shepherding Islam through its latest mid life crisis? If we go back in now, after the debacle that was our second go at Iraq we will never be able to stop the fcukers on the left from trying to tame Islam and make it culturally tolerant.

There was no right answer to Syria and there is no right answer to Iraq.

Yes, the Iranians are dominating in the shia Iraq,but they surely do not want the country to be destabilized…since through Maliqi they control the state. Maybe they just want to make a steady coridore to invade mecca and MedinaMedina through Iraq.

I used to look down on comments where people said Obama was doing this on purpose. However, since Syria, I’m finding it harder and harder to think that random incompetence would allow you to come to the wrong conclusions every time.

Right now the only thing keeping me from thinking this is on purpose is that the Republicans are making equally stupid decisions and statements.

Of course… it would actually be better if he was doing this on purpose. At least there would be hope that someone would oppose him and that the next president would do something different.

I’m new and I made a comment which may have been moderated or just disappeared into the ether, either way I’ll try again.

Hello all, I’m from the UK and my family has had some contact with the joys of Islamic Jihad, but nothing compared to the people who serve. My respect for the people who confront this nasty and vile ideology is eternal and that includes Robert Spencer who should be welcomed with a red carpet unto our shores.

The left have taken to calling for further intervention in Iraq since that pitiful creature Blair stuck his oar in to protect his Prime Ministerial legacy, as if he had one to start with. They now seem to believe that we, the people, have a duty to defend Islam in Iraq from itself because we, the people made them angry to start with.

I think they are dead wrong.

The tossers who inhabit the echelons of power in the West never mentioned backing Assad to keep the likes of ISIS on the back foot (Not that I would have anyway). They wanted to help some mythical good guy who was just a liberal westerner in an Islamic skin, trying to get out. Now they lament a lost opportunity in Syria? Those on the left, those people who took Britain to war in 2003. Who sent the military out underfunded and hamstrung by their bollocks want it go back in… No doubt still hamstrung by their bollocks, too small to be effective and still underfunded.

Where does it stop? If we go back now we will be shepherding Islam through it’s latest mid life crisis for ever. We haven’t got 700 years to wait for the beards to grow up.

So I say fcuk ’em. Let them burn in their own filth and whatever is left at the end can be mopped up and disposed of.

”I’m new and I made a comment which may have been moderated or just disappeared into the ether, either way I’ll try again”

Are you logged in, or are you commenting using your email address ? If you comment using your email, the comment goes into moderation, and may take a while to appear. If you’re logged in, it will appear straightaway.

There are quite a few of us Brits who comment regularly here, as well as Americans, Israelis, Australians, Kiwis, Indians, Indonesians et al.

How did you find Jihad Watch ? I came here when the controversy over the Ground Zero Mosque blew up; I was so horrified I googled, came to JW, and have been here ever since, learning an **incredible amount**.

I did try to post without registering first, then registered. Resulting in my scribble all over the board!

I took a couple of years off work to look after my dad back in 2005 and came across JW. My job kind of makes Robert Spencer’s website and the wisdom he offers so kindly, relevant to me so it was pretty easy to find the website while surfing. I stopped reading when I went back to work and this is the first time I’ve been back. I am sure I will learn much.

Hi Rob, welcome to JW. Like yourself, I am from London, UK. Since 9/11, I woke up to the threat of muslims and islam, and have been an avid follower of these anti-islamic websites ever since. In the once safe, Judeo/Christian neighbourhood where I live, it has been almost “ethnically cleansed” of white, indigenous Brits and is now an absolute “sh!thole, as is most of inner London these days, full of burqas and halal kebab shops. I feel like a stranger in my own country. It’s not England any more, just a multi-cultural dumping ground for asylum-seekers.

Review via Captain Google the Sykes-Picot Agreement [England-France] which set up the present day borders of these Muslim ‘entities’; their newly hand drawn borders crossing and rearranging traditionally observed borders in use by these butchering ethnic and religious sects over the previous centuries.

Colonial bureaucratic hubris? Of course. That was the way of the World in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And, it wasn’t all that long ago, just 1914 or thereabouts.

Now we’ve got this artificial construct named Obama and his merrie band of clueless amateurs in our now offal office along with the merrie band of smug amateurs over there in Foggy Bottom. I just love that traditional name for the neighborhood where our august State Department is lodged in the District. Can’t you just sniff the gaseous releases?

Now these butchering Muslims factions are re-carving their turf lines according to their scimitars, they’re used to this, right? That’s their turf, right?

So, why don’t we Amuricuns/Ameddicans [phonetic depending on the speaker’s accent] just do the coat-holding for a change and let these Muslims factions resume their mutual slaughter?

As a footnote, I came across in my files an article by the WSJ’s Daniel Henninger under the title of Wonder Land dated March 7, 2003…subtitled:
“U.S. to World: Take This Job And Shove It.”

The first sentence reads, “We’re hearing so much these days about anti-Americanism. Let’s start a movement of our own: anti anti-Americanism.”

Absent Obama and his Merrie Band, [another subject altogether] let’s open this Keystone Oil pipeline from Alaska, Canadians joining this effort, and then give the “finger” to the OPEC and their associates.

Speaking as someone with experience in the US Dept. of State, I suspect someone, somewhere in State probably noticed Iranian involvement with Iraq’s Shi’ites. However, I have a strong suspicion too that the O, speaking to either Shrillary Shrooo or Hatchetface Kerry said, “I don’t wanna hear about it!” in good, Chicago thug style. Hence the reports got buried.

It’s not exactly news that Iran has a history of being involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan in combat-related aid to American enemies or that they’ve held the threat to plunge Iraq into chaos over our heads in the past. It’s not news that Iran funds jihad-terrorists across the Sunni-Shia divide. Hamas fighters trained in Iran. The Al Qaeda connection to Hizballah and Iran goes back to its beginnings, to shared training camps in Sudan, to shared terror operations (from the African embassies to Khobar Towers to the travel arrangements of al Qaeda fighters and the giving of sanctuary). This kind of cooperation began as far back as when Arafat’s PLO moved into Lebanon (as a prelude to destroying Lebanon) and trained what would become the future Iranian Republican Guard and Hizballah, so these new reports are not surprising. This is a sucker game. I’m with dda, get the remaining Christians “hostages” out and lock the gate behind them.

If Maliki remains and the Iranian Shia prevail in this skirmish with supposed Saudi, and more importantly, U.S. backed Sunni jihadists being imported from Syria, then we know it was the official “suck” orchestrated in the filling of Shia client state, Iraq, by Iran.

We were all foretold of this outcome long ago by Robert here on this site, so it should come as no surprise.

The only other possible outcome is that Maliki is beheaded, with the “Sunni jihadists” declaring takfir against any western government official, let alone Iraq’s purported president, and the current carnage continues apace.

That however, would not be a bad thing. Reagan employed this very same strategy, exploiting the historical Sunni/Shia rift in Islam, though at this point, may have simply been blind luck, in his zeal to knock Russia down several pegs simultaneously.

This stinks of Sunni/Saudi money in collusion with Iran for a common purpose at the moment, to drag the U.S. Back into the active theatre of war there.

I would support one, and only *one* type of – strictly limited – military intervention by any non-Muslim country.

To wit: an Operation Magic Carpet, an Operation Exodus, for the remnant Iraqi Christians – and the Christians of Syria, also. What the Israelis did for the Jews of Ethiopia, Yemen, Iraq, surely the wider non-Muslim world could do for the Christians of Iraq and Syria.

Go in; establish a guarded “gateway” to which they can come, where they can be – carefully, with the aid of people like Canon Andrew White of St George’s Baghdad, and Barnabas Fund, and other bodies that *know* these communities through and through and could therefore detect and weed out any mohammedans pretending to be what they weren’t – and through which they can be got out to the West. And when the very last Christian is safely *out* of Syria and Mesopotamia…close the gate, slam and lock it, and leave, leaving the mohammedans to stew in the Hell of their own making.

I would be happy to commit Australian troops to the specific task of endangered-by-genocide Syrian and Iraqi Christians, and for that matter, hauling out with them as much as possible of their priceless historic manuscripts, icons and other artefacts, which treasures if left behind will be smashed to atoms by the mohammedans sooner or later.

When Bush was in power, I kept hoping the State Department would become a useful part of the government once again.
I am bitterly disappointed.
With its increasing visibility, our State Department has proven singularly incompetent and ignorant of the more subtle workings of nationalism, tribalism, religion and culture in the world.
They have decided, foolishly, to negotiate and settle with the OIC, and yet they refuse to see the dangers of the Islamic horde to the integrity of diversity in the world in any general sense.
It’s as if the sharpest have been muzzled or forced to serve ideology more than sense.

Popular Categories

Robert Spencer FaceBook Page

Robert Spencer Twitter

Robert Spencer YouTube Channel

Jihad Watch® is a registered trademark of Robert Spencer in the United States and/or other countries - Site Developed and Managed by Free Speech Defense

Content copyright Jihad Watch, Jihad Watch claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to their respective owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and you do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.